Sir Sidney Low laid the blame for the outbreak of the Great War on the Congress of Vienna in 1814-15. He argued that the military and diplomatic figures who had sought to restore order to Europe after the Napoleonic Wars had consulted their own self-interest rather than public sentiment, leaving the Continent resentful and still divided.

The legacy of the Congress was a ferment of dissatisfaction, said Low, which had manifested itself in sixty years of revolution and war; the Great War itself was only the last and most catastrophic in a series of conflicts to arise out of the political elite’s vain efforts to snuff out national, democratic and liberal movements across the Continent.

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